Journal Writing and Letter Writing In Homeschool

It has been awhile since I have updated the blog!

MashaAllah there is so much going on, but there are many updates to share.

My four year old son has been writing a lot, for awhile now. He just recently began showing interest in writing letters and putting them in an envelope.  Well he had no one to mail them to! I decided that this would be a good time for him to get a penpal. Not only are we at a time where is emailing and texting, but when was the last time you wrote a letter, and bought a stamp? I want my children to experience the joys of letter writing, as I intend on scrap booking it, so he can see it as he grows up and it also helps me to see how much his writing has improved!

Also we started a few months back the Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons Book. Sent to us by my dear friend at Homeschooling Muslimah Mommies. While my son has been reading since two alhamdulilah..I actually use the book to reinforce and make his reading stronger mashaAllah..the book is to help children read at a second grade level upon completion. We love the book, we are flying through it and I like that at the end it has SOUND writing, so it just adds extra practice to his writing. He even has his own journal, which I date every time we use it and what lesson we stopped on.

A few tips and advice from our family. To get the children excited about writing, we let them pick their own pencils, books, crayons etc ..so they hcan have their own person writing station

We also bought several books, a few of them to doodle in, practice writing, and have fun with and a few on the side only used for homeschool purposes. This does not confuse our children, it actually helps them practice. Our oldest son took his journal on the train and would write in it until we got to our stop.

I am very certain he will enjoy his new penpal adventure. We will be starting our first letter today inshaAllah and it will be good to practic his writing, spelling, and appreciate the joys of getting mail. I LOVE to get mail mashaAllah!

What are you doing to encourage your child’s writing? 🙂

 

I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.–Anne Rice

Fun Writing and Pre-Writing Exercises

I love teachpreschool.org and Deborah recently was on a news broadcast sharing about different pre writing and writing exercises. We tried two of them here with our little spin on it.

Ziploc bag, Food coloring, and liquid soap and this became a fun writing exercise for our children.

The boys pressed on it, patted it, and rubbed their hands on it.

After getting to know this little contraption. We begin to make letters with it by tracing out letters with our fingers on the bag.

Our oldest son made a T. He eventually wrote his name in the goo.

This is a great mess free idea that the boys really enjoyed for a long time. We made many letters and talked about the sounds they make,

 

 

 

 

 

In our next writing exercise we used oats and farina (it’s like cream of wheat) and wrote in it more letter practice.

 

For pre-writing fun our two year old made circles and lines in it too.

 

 

 

Simple fun pre writing and writing exercises.

 

You can see Deborah’s video here for more great ideas:

http://www.teachpreschool.org/2011/09/teach-preschool-in-the-news-promoting-prewriting-skills/

>Write On!

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Alhamdulillah woot woot Takbir wrote his name! What can I say? This will open doors for him to use his imagination even more, as we begin to teach him how to make other letters, it comes to him quickly since he is pretty good at the basic lines and curves of the letters. I saw a great idea from Nurturestore about creating a writing center. We went to the store and let Takbir and Tasbeeh pick out their own pencils and pencil box that goes in their book bag or on the school/dinner table. They loved it!! Here are a few ways to get your children excited about writing.

1.) Having material available. We have a sign that says Writers Workshop and inshaAllah we plan on setting it up so they can know to go to their writing section that has their special pencils, markers, and crayons all ready for them.

2.) Even when you are out and about give your child a little word pad or doodle boards that lets them erase and use the attached pen to keep them writing and praciting. Ask them what they are writing about and have a discussion about it

3.) Do make playdough, use blcks, sticks etc and form the letters with these things. Before Takbir started officially writing, he would often use blocks to spell out letters, which signaled to us that he knew how to form the letters.

4.) Have the ABC’s around the house. Alhamdulilah the boys have their own room which has ABC boarder around the room and on their table is a name tag with their name and ABC’s surround it. I think this is a good way for them to keep it to memory.